"The Last Play at Shea," which comes the day after the Major League Baseball All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium, makes Joel the only artist to ever have played both Yankee Stadium (two nights in 1990) and Shea Stadium. It is also the first in-season concert at Shea since Clapton and John played there during the 1992 baseball season.

On of the world's top concert draws, Joel took in $40 million in 2007 from only 29 shows according to Billboard Boxscore. This year, Joel is "not touring, just working," his longtime agent Dennis Arfa tells Billboard.com. "We put weeks together instead of months."

Joel is out for a brief run beginning February 23rd, 2008 at the Honda Center in Anaheim and including stops in Sacramento (February 26th, 2008), Denver (February 28th, 2008), Milwaukee (March 2nd, 2008). He then plays Des Moines on April 15th, 2008 and Pittsburgh April 18th, 2008, prior to headlining the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival April 26th, 2008.

"Shea Stadium is one of the most hallowed venues in rock and roll history and it's an honor to help throw Shea the ultimate concert farewell party," said Joel, in a prepared statement. "As a sports fan and a music lover, I will always have a place for Shea Stadium in my heart. I thank the Mets for giving me and my fans a chance to rock Shea Stadium one last time for the ages."

Joel expressed his thanks at the press conference, where he was given a Mets jersey with "JOEL '08" inscribed on the back. The rock singer, who has sold over 100 million records worldwide, engaged the press with stories about his boyhood baseball fandom, from overcoming his distress that the Dodgers left Brooklyn to watching Mets pitcher Wilmer "Vinegar Bend" Mizell in the 1960s. "I've been to more Mets games than Yankees games," said Joel, who claimed that he would have written more songs about the Mets had he known more words that rhyme with "Mets."

Despite remaining hugely popular on the concert circuit, Billy Joel has not released a record of original pop music since 1993. When asked if his touring success had inspired him to write more, he smiled. "No. It's inspired me to keep touring," said Joel. "Hopefully we'll have something new to perform here." Joel did not elaborate on whether it would be a new song or a new aspect to his performance.

Since his first solo album in 1972, Billy Joel has had 33 Top 40 hits and 23 Grammy nominations, winning six. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, and is also well-respected for his copious amounts of charity work, which earned him the 2002 MusiCares "Person of The Year" award from the MusiCares Foundation.

Shea Stadium opened in 1964 and has been the home of the Mets ever since. It was the home of NFL's New York Jets for 20 seasons and the New York Giants in 1975, and has also hosted several significant rock concerts, including 1970's Festival for Peace concert with Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jimi Hendrix, Paul Simon, Janis Joplin and many others, and the Elton John and Eric Clapton double bill in 1992. Shea Stadium is scheduled to be replaced by Citi Field, which is currently under construction, in 2009.

"We wanted to put as many songs as we could into a 78-minute CD," Lewis said. "We could have done 10 more volumes of these easily."

Lewis said she tried to make each CD - representing pop, country and R&B - the best snapshot possible. (The classic pop CD, for example, runs from Petula Clark to Tina Turner.)

"It's a great way to hear a lot of music," she said. "But it also shows how great the Grammy legacy is."

"I think we were misled," said Kevin Lewis, 28, of Ronkonkoma, LI, who bought 10 $95 tickets to Joel's Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 concert. Wednesday , the Mets added "a second - and final" Joel concert at Shea on July 18th, 2008, a Friday night.

"They just really screwed people and totally diluted the value of these...Wednesday night tickets!" said Lewis, a mortgage company manager.

Mets officials said that since the 50,000 tickets to the first concert sold out in 48 minutes, demand dictated they add another show to accommodate as many fans as possible.

A Mets spokesman rejected charges the team hoodwinked people, releasing a transcript of Joel saying at a February 7th, 2008 press conference that "it's possible we'll do more" shows "if there's enough of a ticket demand."

"Who knew we could sell out two Shea Stadiums?" Joel said Saturday night before his concert at the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif. "Two Sheas? Touché!"

For Joel, the Shea Stadium shows are more than just another big score in his already-historic career. Not only do the concerts make Joel the only artist to play Shea, Yankee, and Giants stadiums - or, as Joel calls it, "the hat trick" - but they make him part of Shea's rock history, which started with The Beatles in 1965 and rolled through 2003 when Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band played there.

Playing one Shea show was thrill enough for Joel, who, despite his well-publicized love of the Yankees, has actually seen more Mets games. However, when demand for tickets - which, at one point last week, had brokers asking for nearly $100,000 a ticket on StubHub for prime seats - was so high, the Mets and Joel decided to add another show.

Joel said he was excited by the response from his fans. "We're hoping to do something out of the ordinary in appreciation of the support we're seeing from New York," he said Saturday night. At a news conference earlier this month, Joel said he would likely look for some new approaches to his songs to make the Shea shows memorable rather than adding big laser lights or other special effects.

And Joel expects to continue his tradition of making sure the first two rows of seats at the concerts are not put on sale, reserving them instead for fans that his staff selects from the nosebleed seats on the night of the show.

For the Mets, the final concerts at Shea, which will be torn down this year so the new Citi Field can be unveiled next year, Joel's selection couldn't have worked out better.

"I've watched Billy since he was hanging out in Roslyn down at My Father's Place or US Blues," said Mets chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon. "What a thrill it is for all of us at the Mets for Billy to finish off musically at Shea what The Beatles started back in 1965."